School officials: Put up or shut up on new home for arts school

The San Francisco school board took a first look at an architect’s drawing of a new building that would house the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts at 135 Van Ness Ave., currently a rundown site in the middle of prime real estate.

For years, community groups and supporters of the school have pushed to move the campus to the Van Ness site, which now houses administrative offices, with voters even approving set-aside bond money to make that happen.

But there has never been enough money.

School district officials have estimated that seismically upgrading and renovating the site, while maintaining historic its architecture, would cost upward of $220 million.

The $15 million in the district’s bank account for the project is not even enough to break ground.

Yet district officials say, despite the fizzling out of previous efforts, it’s time to put up or shut up.

A resolution pending before the school board would put in writing a commitment to make the project happen: “That the superintendent and the Board of Education will work together with partners from the public and private sectors using existing and new systems to bring this project to fruition, with a commitment to secure appropriate resources and to reaffirm our belief that the arts and culture are central to life in San Francisco, a city that values its young people as much as it reveres and celebrates creativity and the arts,” the proposed resolution states.

Best case scenario? The district would break ground in about five years, leaving the school at its current site in Diamond Heights.